Environmental Justice News

Global coal gets a boost from the carbon market
Kevin Smith, October 2008
After the UN decided to allow more efficient coal-fired power stations to gain carbon financing as an offset project, the carbon market is now being used to support new coal in the South as well as the North.

The www.carbontradewatch.org site has been updated and rebuilt with more resources and archives on carbon trading, including the new multimedia section with new films, photo essays and audio programmes on issues around Environmental and Climate Justice.

Action against agrofuels (Video) on the eve of the 9th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Bonn, Germany, 17 May 2008 Climate justice groups warn of false solutions to climate change at the CBD 22 May 2008

Offset standard is off target
Kevin Smith
3 April 2008
A new government ‘kitemark’ suggests that most carbon offset schemes are flawed, but fails to address the more fundamental problem of paying others to clean up after us, argues Kevin Smith

Offsetting democracy
Exposing the inadequacies of carbon trading
Kevin Smith
April 2008
Carbon trading and offsetting distracts attention from the wider, systemic changes that need to be taken to achieve a low-carbon economy.

Locus focus and the Carbon Trade Watch (audio)
Tamra Gilbertson and Kevin Smith
Kboo radio, Portland, 5 February 2008
Kevin Smith and Tamra Gilbertson talk about what's wrong with carbon credits, how they do nothing to fight global warming, and even exacerbate the problem.

REDD: Growing money on trees
Oscar Reyes
February 2008
Deforestation is responsible for one-fifth of annual carbon emissions – more than the entire transport sector. Yet a new global scheme to ‘reduce deforestation’ could end up rewarding the companies and governments that cause it, writes Oscar Reyes.

[url]detail_pub.phtml?know_id=202&11c[link]Paving the way for Agrofuels EU policy, sustainability criteria, and climate calculations [/url] Carbon Trade Watch EU criteria for 'sustainable' agrofuels are set on a collision course with the EU's proposed 10 per cent mandatory target for agrofuel use. This updated edition of 'Paving the Way for Agrofuels' includes additional material on the EU's proposed renewables directive and how Clean Development Mechanism funding is already starting to be tapped by the palm oil industry.

The Carbon Connection Carbon Trade Watch “The Carbon Connection” is a new documentary that follows the story of two communities in Scotland and Brazil who made their own films about living with the impacts of the trade in carbon dioxide.

From false to real solutions for climate change
Patrick Bond, 7 January 2008

Exposing false solutions, building real answers, climate justice for all
Closing day at the Solidarity Village for a Cool Planet
Press release, 10 December 2007

Agrofuels - Another Scramble for Africa?
Trusha Reddy
20 September 2007
Just as we begin to come to terms with the colonially-sponsored corporate conquest of our oil resources, along comes a new wave of ‘green’ companies turning fertile African lands to Northern ‘gold’.

Carbon Trading: the limits of free-market logic
Kevin Smith
20 September 2007
Carbon trading, its backers claim, brings emissions reductions and supports sustainable development in the global south. But, argues Kevin Smith, it may do neither, and is harming efforts to create a low-carbon economy.

PRESS RELEASE Carbon Offset Companies targeted by Climate Camp Activists
20 August 2007

Carbon trading won't work
Michael K. Dorsey
1 April 2007
Experiments with the market scheme favored by Schwarzenegger shows trading favors big polluters without curbing global warming gases.

Carbon offset companies using Enron style accounting 20 February 2007
A new report by Carbon Trade Watch shows that the carbon offset industry is using the same sort of ‘future value accounting’ that caused the collapse of energy giant Enron.

Carbon offsets not welcome here
Larry Lohmann
27 February 2007
Carbon credits are subsidising some of the most polluting industries in the developing world. Local people do not want these companies improved, they want them shut down, says Larry Lohmann

The Carbon Neutral Myth: Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins
Kevin Smith
20 February 2007
Carbon offsets are sold to an increasingly carbon conscious public to absolve their climate sins. Scratch the surface, however, and a disturbing picture emerges, where creative accountancy and elaborate shell games cover up the impossibility of verifying genuine climate change benefits, and where communities in the South often have little choice as offset projects are inflicted on them.

Prepare for the Greenwash
Kevin Smith,
28 February 2007

Biofuel targets are not the answer
February 2007
The EU has unveiled new targets for biofuel use, but increased reliance on crops for fuel means the destruction of forests and livelihoods in the global South, without a clear environmental gain. The EU should instead address the key issue of growing transport volumes. By Jutta Kill

Stern Words While in Europe They’re Trading Hot Air December 2006
Kevin Smith

As the second round of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme is being launched there needs to be an honest evaluation of whether or not this sort of free market environmentalism is going to prove an adequate response to climate change, or whether it is simply providing business with a cost-effective way of not having to take effective action.

A licence to carry on polluting? 5 December 2007
By Larry Lohmann

Carbon trading fraud 30 December 2006
By Praful Bidwai

South Africa: Capital's Dangerous Gimmick December 2006
By Patrick Bond, Rehana Dada and Graham Erion

Stern Words While in Europe They’re Trading Hot Air
By Kevin Smith
Parliamentary Brief, December 2006

Carbon cop-outs December 2006
By Kevin Smith
They might salve our climate consciences, but carbon offset schemes are no substitute for the kind of collective action and social change that is necessary to combat global warming, writes Kevin Smith

Obscenity' of carbon trading
Kevin Smith
BBC News website, 9 November 2006

Kyoto: a false consensus?
Larry Lohmann interviewed by Heidi Bachram
Red Pepper, November 2006
At the UN climate talks in Nairobi, Kenya from 6-17 November, many participants are likely to concentrate on defending and extending the Kyoto Protocol against the Bush administration's opposition. However, a new book critiques the embattled Kyoto agreement and other carbon trading schemes from a different, social justice. Heidi Bachram talks to the editor, Larry Lohmann

Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power
Editor: Larry Lohmann
Development & Dialogue No. 48, September 2006

Market-based responses do little to itigate the global threat of climate change according to “Carbon Trading,” a new book edited by Larry Lohmann. The book’s authors take issue with a new market which hands the rights to the atmosphere to transnational corporations, incentivising a business-as-usual approach to the environment rather than promoting investment in alternative energy sources. The book’s authors, all of whom participate in the Durban Group for Climate Justice, argue that carbon trading tends towards a redistribution of wealth from poor to rich, while the impossibility of measuring what is being traded and the complexity of the new carbon markets makes them a likely target for fraud. The book also provides a short history of carbon trading, and offers nine case studies of the outcomes of various carbon offset schemes.

Press release (4 October 2006):
New Book Exposes Scandal of Carbon Trading
"Bad for the South, bad for the North, and bad for the climate"

Carbon credits and the green desert September 2006
Heidi Bachram
As the struggle for land and water resources in Brazil intensifies, Heidi Bachram discovers that the new carbon market is an added burden for vulnerable communities.

The camp at the end of the world July 2006
Heidi Bachram
As the impending climate crisis looms, Heidi Bachram takes a look at what direct action has to offer.

Carbon Offset Controversy at Phone Co-op AGM
Heidi Bachram, 28 June 2005

Kyoto fails indigenous peoples on climate justice
Heidi Bachram
Carbon Trade Watch, 1 December 2005

Fissile fantasies
Adam Ma’anit, June 2006
The nuclear industry has
always had something
of the absurd about it.
Efforts to recover its lost
glory by painting itself
green is just the latest
example of this, as Adam Ma'anit
explains

What has the US done for us?
Heidi Bachram, May 2006

War of the Words
Heidi Bachram, 24 March 2006
Guerra de los mundos - y las palabras